Tech Tutors are a group of local students dedicated to helping out the senior citizens at Sea Country Senior and Community Center with their buzzing technology questions.
Tech Tutor is a club originally founded by John Ulrich and a few others back in 2015. It allowed high school student volunteers to partner with seniors and assist them in getting comfortable with new technology.
The club is now led by Arushi Verma (11). She leads an organization of student volunteers who give their time to help senior citizens with any of their technology issues.
The Tech Tutor program is a student-led organization. Their organization actively collaborates with the Sea Country administration to further develop their volunteer program.
The Tech Tutor club served 285 participants in its first six months of operation back in 2015. Now the number has grown well over that mark and continues to grow each and every meeting.
The volunteers go over to Sea Country Senior and Community Center every Friday from 3:45 to 4:30 p.m. to help out the seniors with any of their technology issues. Students are also able to develop communication skills which, in turn, will help them in their future.
The program allows the student volunteers to teach their knowledge and skills to the seniors and also earn community service hours along the way. The volunteers provide services to the seniors to adapt them to the rapidly developing technology.
Many of the volunteers translate for the seniors, helping them better understand what is being explained.
Any student can get involved in this program and help out the seniors in our area. Many of the student volunteers are from Aliso Niguel High School as it is the closest to the center but there are also some students from other schools such as Dana Hills.
Sebastian Elguera (10) is an active member of the Tech Tutor club and goes almost weekly to the center to help out the seniors. He is a dedicated student and volunteer who loves to help his community to make it a better and more accessible place for everyone.
Sebastian comments, “I think this club is very beneficial for the seniors and for the students because the seniors get to learn and adapt to the new technology and get more comfortable. It always puts a smile on my face whenever the seniors are happy to learn something new.”
The volunteers always say that the senior citizens are very nice and thankful that the student volunteers are there to help them. They always smile when they finally understand something that they were confused about.
Another student volunteer is Melody Moeinza (11), she is also a consistent volunteer and she also loves helping out the elderly with their technology problems. Melody is a natural leader as she also runs her club, the Make-A-Wish Club, which helps the less fortunate.
Melody comments, “I love going there on Fridays to help out around the community. It always brings me joy whenever a senior citizen learns something new. I usually translate for them but teaching them how to use the phone or iPad is very fun as well.”
